Öztürk v. Hyde

Court: U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit

Date Filed: Aug. 25, 2025

Background: On March 25, 2025, plain-clothed federal agents arrested Rümeysa Öztürk, a Turkish citizen in the United States on a student visa at Tufts University, on the street near her home in Somerville, Massachusetts. To date, the government has not provided a basis for her detention other than an op-ed she co-bylined for her student newspaper about Israel’s actions in Palestine.

While authorities moved Öztürk from Massachusetts to Vermont and eventually transported her to a detention facility in Louisiana, Öztürk’s attorney filed a habeas corpus petition asking a federal district court in Massachusetts to review whether her detention was legal. The petition was then transferred to a federal district court in Vermont.

In seeking to dismiss the claims, the government argued that the district court did not have jurisdiction to hear Öztürk’s petition seeking relief from unconstitutional detention, relying in part on provisions in the Immigration and Nationality Act. 

The district court rejected the government’s arguments, allowing the habeas claims to continue in Vermont and ordering the government to return Öztürk to Vermont. The government appealed that decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and sought a stay of the order, which the Second Circuit rejected. While the appeal remained pending, the district court issued a decision ordering Öztürk’s release, which the government has not separately appealed. 

Our Position: The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press — joined by the Committee to Protect Journalists, PEN America, Reporters Without Borders, and the Student Press Law Center — filed a friend-of-the-court brief urging the Second Circuit to affirm the district court’s order assuming jurisdiction over Öztürk’s habeas claims.

• The First Amendment affords strong protection for editorials and other forms of opinion journalism, and it prohibits the government from discriminating based on a speaker’s viewpoint in all but the most exceptional circumstances. 

• Noncitizen journalists perform important public interest newsgathering and reporting every day.

• Crediting the government’s jurisdiction-stripping arguments will chill reporting and commentary by these journalists.

• The availability of habeas relief for retaliatory detention is important because the INA provisions cited by the government nominally permit the government to seek removal based on protected speech, and without habeas review in district court, First Amendment violations may go unremedied.

From the Brief: “The government is claiming unfettered power to detain noncitizens, expressly based on First Amendment-protected speech, including reportage, without any immediate judicial recourse. That is not the law, and it is essential that federal district courts be able to entertain quickly a habeas petition alleging the retaliatory detention of a non-citizen journalist.”